Parti Liyani Saga VI

We all want an equal (or more equal) society. But at what cost? 

LKY once said: “You want an equal society with low growth? Or an unequal society with high growth then you take part of the growth and support the lower strata? With no growth, everything goes wrong...We work towards equal opportunities. Not equal results but equal opportunities in life.”

But then, what is equal opportunities in life when the life you are living is clearly deprived of opportunities as compared to those at the top? What then becomes of such “equal opportunities” when a society suffers from systemic inequality, that is, an evolved system unwittingly geared towards the rich and powerful as a matter of both default and design?

You see, a child with better tuition, a good home environment and engaging parentage would surely provide much more opportunities from the start as compared to a child of the same intelligence, but he or she comes from a broken, large family with barely enough to feed all. The result differs much because the opportunities differ even more. 

In fact, the Parti Liyani’s case is another example of such deprivation. She may be a migrant worker, but her 4-year battle in the courts is not unfamiliar to many in the lower rung of our society who have experienced similar legal, economic and/or social oppression as citizens.

In today’s article by Lydia Lim, she wrote about an interview with the president of migrant workers’ advocacy group TWC2. 

In a statement, Ms Debbie Fordyce, said: “In Yani’s case, she was arrested for on Dec 2, 2016, charged on Aug 31, 2017, and has spent almost four years at Home’s shelter, waiting for the conclusion of her case. We also provided her a bailor for the sum of $15,000, an option which is not available for most migrant workers accused of crimes.”

“These migrant workers are often not allowed to work, thus they are reliant on organisations like Home to provide them shelter, food, and financial assistance. During this time, they are also not allowed to leave the country, and have no means of seeing their families back home.”

“Consequently, by the time many migrant workers are presented with charges, they choose to plead guilty even if they are of the view that they are innocent of the charges that they are facing. The time it takes for them to serve their sentence may be shorter than the time it takes to go through the court process.”

So what do we then make of LKY’s trade off between equality and growth? Is the cost really low (or lower) growth, that is, making society more equal will eat into the economic pie, threatening our competitiveness, and causing greater hardship to the poor with rising unemployment? As such, a child from that family will then suffer even more when dad comes home one evening breaking down, because he has just got fired and the family savings is practically depleted? 

But, bearing the above in mind, and if we reflect even deeper, isn’t there a point in economic growth when we will have to tell ourselves that if we carry on the way we have been carrying on, where the rich continue to store their wealth in the equivalent of financial warehouses situated locally and abroad, having enough for generations to come, the trade off will over time be far worse than just lower economic growth and global competitiveness, thereby leaving a society that is not just divided, but broken, disillusioned and spent? 

Food for thought?

Well, in another article today by editor-at-large Han Fook Kwang, he too addressed the red hot mala dish on the social justice menu after the Parti Liyani’s case. And one of them is the “question of privilege and entitlement enjoyed by the rich and influential, including their access to justice and corridors of power.” 

He quoted Law Minister Shanmugan saying that “we have to look at that, and deal with what went wrong.” 

Actually, the reality of what went wrong is not something we are completely blind to. There is nothing new here. Any historian will tell you that it is recycled or repackaged problem of society as the rich and poor divide deepens. 

Mind you, this is not the coming together of world renown scientists trying to solve the mystery to the M-theory (M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory). But it is no less challenging though, because it is a problem with many names and many suggested solutions, yet it is often the lack of political will and moral courage that bedevils the resolve to bring it to some level of restored trust, hope and resolution. 

I suspect this is so, or made worse, because of the ostentatiousness of wealth at the top. It is largely a problem of the attitude of those who have and can’t help but flaunt it. It is therefore both an attitude of entrenched self-preservation, thereby leaving all goodwill measures half-heartedly implemented, and of ensuing self-enrichment, thereby perpetuating the problem even further.

Recall Thorstein Veblen's sociology of conspicuous consumption, which “produced the term invidious consumption”, that is, “the ostentatious consumption of goods that is meant to provoke the envy of other people; and the term conspicuous compassion, the deliberate use of charitable donations of money in order to enhance the social prestige of the donor, with a display of superior socio-economic status.”

As such, as the rich and poor divide increases, what outstrips lower growth as a cost to society is that we get a shallower society, one that is so consumed with conspicuous consumption so as to bring attention to oneself or one’s wealth for the sole intent of provoking “envy of other people” that we lose our humanity in the trade off as its greater cost. 

Alas, nothing is spared in such a society where even virtue of compassion becomes a means to an end, as Thorstein puts it, “the deliberate use of charitable donations of money in order to enhance the social prestige of the donor.”

So, going back to LKY’s trade off, I suspect that there is a greater hidden cost to society than just losing out on growth (assuming lower growth here is strictly measured in GDP terms and not growth in happiness, contentment and community). And maybe, the story of the maid taking down a chairman will inject some much needed fresh impetus into a very ancient subject that humanity has been struggling with since the first settlers claimed lands to plant vegetation for market sale and kicked off the first legal call for private land ownership, and its protection and perpetuation. 

Let me nevertheless end with the appreciation speech which former Speaker Tan Soo Khoon gave for retired MP in July 2006. 

“Like the newly MPs, we retirees were also at one time greenhorns in the world of politics but we learned from the experience of others who came before us. One of the most valuable pieces of advice imparted to me by my older colleagues when I first came into Parliament came from the late EW Barker, who said: “Be humble and do not be overwhelmed by your newly accorded status”. And to that, I might add, it also helps if you come across as warm and approachable to your constituents, and not one who lords over them.””

If you missed it, the operative words are “one who lords over them”. For after the Liyani and Liew household legal saga, which stretched over 4 years of trauma for the starkly deprived, the one cardinal sin of an already unequal society like ours is to even give the perception that the ones sitting at the top are lording over those at the bottom. 

I guess our Law Minister will have his parliamentary plate full next month when he opens up the can of worms on “the question of the privilege and entitlement enjoyed by the rich and influential, including their access to justice and corridors of power."